The Myth About Homework

["Jim Clauson, Breakthrough Systems" <jim@jclauson.com>]

Posted at Del Nelson's suggestion

From Time.com and the current print cover story:

The Myth About Homework

Think hours of slogging are helping your child make the grade? Think again

By CLAUDIA WALLIS

Posted Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2006

Sachem was the last straw.  Or was it Kiva? My 
12-year-old daughter and I had been drilling 
social-studies key words for more than an hour. 
It was 11 p.m. Our entire evening had, as usual, 
consisted of homework and conversations (a.k.a. 
nagging) about homework. She was tired and fed 
up. I was tired and fed up. The words wouldn't 
stick. They meant nothing to her. They didn't 
mean much to me either. After all, when have I 
ever used sachem in a sentence--until just now?

As the summer winds down, I'm dreading scenes 
like that one from seventh grade. Already the 
carefree August nights have given way to 
meaningful conversations (a.k.a. nagging) about 
the summer reading that didn't get done. So what 
could be more welcome than two new books 
assailing this bane of modern family life: The 
Homework Myth (Da Capo Press; 243 pages), by 
Alfie Kohn, the prolific, perpetual critic of 
today's test-driven schools, and The Case Against 
Homework (Crown; 290 pages), a cri de coeur by 
two moms, lawyer Sara Bennett and journalist Nancy Kalish.

Both books cite studies, surveys, statistics, 
along with some hair-raising anecdotes, on how a 
rising tide of dull, useless assignments is 
oppressing families and making kids hate 
learning. A few highlights from the books and my own investigation:

• According to a 2004 national survey of 2,900 
American children conducted by the University of 
Michigan, the amount of time spent on homework is up 51% since 1981.

• Most of that increase reflects bigger loads for 
little kids. An academic study found that whereas 
students ages 6 to 8 did an average of 52 min. of 
homework a week in 1981, they were toiling 128 
min. weekly by 1997. And that's before No Child 
Left Behind kicked in. An admittedly less 
scientific poll of parents conducted this year 
for AOL and the Associated Press found that 
elementary school students were averaging 78 min. a night.

• The onslaught comes despite the fact that an 
exhaustive review by the nation's top homework 
scholar, Duke University's Harris Cooper, 
concluded that homework does not measurably 
improve academic achievement for kids in grade 
school. That's right: all the sweat and tears do 
not make Johnny a better reader or mathematician.

• Too much homework brings diminishing returns. 
Cooper's analysis of dozens of studies found that 
kids who do some homework in middle and high 
school score somewhat better on standardized 
tests, but doing more than 60 to 90 min. a night 
in middle school and more than 2 hr. in high 
school is associated with, gulp, lower scores.

• Teachers in many of the nations that outperform 
the U.S. on student achievement tests--such as 
Japan, Denmark and the Czech Republic--tend to 
assign less homework than American teachers, but 
instructors in low-scoring countries like Greece, 
Thailand and Iran tend to pile it on.

Success on standardized tests is, of course, only 
one measure of learning--and only one purported 
goal of homework. Educators, including Cooper, 
tend to defend homework by saying it builds study 
habits, self-discipline and time-management 
skills. But there's also evidence that homework 
sours kids' attitudes toward school. "It's one 
thing to say we are wasting kids' time and 
straining parent-kid relationships," Kohn told 
me, "but what's unforgivable is if homework is 
damaging our kids' interest in learning, undermining their curiosity."

Kohn's solution is radical: he wants a 
no-homework policy to become the default, with 
exceptions for tasks like interviewing parents on 
family history, kitchen chemistry and family reading.

Or, in a nation in which 71% of mothers of kids 
under 18 are in the workforce, how about 
extending the school day or year beyond its 
agrarian-era calendar? Let students do more work 
at school and save evenings for family and serendipity.

Bennett and Kalish have a more modest proposal. 
Parents should demand a sensible homework policy, 
perhaps one based on Cooper's rule of thumb: 10 
min. a night per grade level. They offer lessons 
from their own battle to rein in the workload at 
their kids' private middle school in Brooklyn, 
N.Y. Among their victories: a nightly time limit, 
a policy of no homework over vacations, no more 
than two major tests a week, fewer weekend assignments and no Monday tests.

Why don't more parents in homework-heavy 
districts take such actions? Do too many of us 
think it's just our child who is struggling, so 
who are we to lead a revolt? Yup, when it comes 
to the battle of homework mountain, we've got too 
many Indians and not enough sachems
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